The Brain Surgeon's Take

Mark knows the true meaning of sacrifice, perseverance, and resilience. Mark served as a Navy SEAL Special Warfare Operator 1st Class with SEAL Team 5A. As a Navy SEAL, Mark did combat deployments to Iraq. On his last deployment, Mark sustained a gunshot wound to the head from a bullet that went over his rifle through his right eye and out the back of his head a few inches behind his right ear. The injury left him blind in his right eye. Even though Mark was gravely wounded, he refused to be carried to the medivac helicopter. He walked himself through a ‘hot zone’ to be transported to a medical facility.

Against all odds, Mark worked through his critical injury and recovered. During his first few years of recovery, mobility, endurance, awareness, and memory were significantly affected, but Mark was determined to enter a new career path in law enforcement. After leaving the Navy, Mark began working at the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and shortly thereafter completed the Police Academy. Since beginning employment, he has been to several law enforcement/investigations-related qualification courses. Mark is continuing his career at the Lake County Sheriff’s Office as a Detective in the Criminal Investigations Division. He is assigned to the Sheriff’s Office Tactical Response Team as an Assistant Team Leader and is a member of the community safety team.

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Dr. Allen Sills is the NFL's Chief Medical Officer, a full-time position dedicated to advancing the health and safety of the sport of football. He became the NFL's first CMO in March 2017, joining the league from Vanderbilt University. As a neurosurgeon specializing in the treatment of athletes, Dr. Sills continues to serve at Vanderbilt as a Professor of Neurological Surgery and the Founder and Co-Director of the Vanderbilt Sports Concussion Center.

Dr. Sills has published over 170 scientific articles and presentations, including over 40 in the last five years on the topic of sports concussion. He is a member of the Concussion in Sport Group, American Board of Neurological Surgery, and the American College of Surgeons.

Before joining the NFL, Dr. Sills served as a consulting neurosurgeon for the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies, the NHL's Nashville Predators, the US Equestrian Foundation, and the athletic programs at Vanderbilt University, Belmont University and Mississippi State University. He also served as an Unaffiliated Neurotrauma Consultant on the NFL sidelines, and as a neurological consultant to the NCAA and the International Equestrian Foundation (FEI).

Dr. Sills graduated from Mississippi State University and received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University, where he also went on to complete his internship in General Surgery, his residency training in Neurological Surgery and an NIH-funded Neuro-Oncology Fellowship.

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As an undergraduate at The University of Miami, Andrés majored in Exercise Physiology and minored in Psychology. He took a rigorous course load that included nutrition, anatomy, physiology, musculoskeletal biochemistry, evolution and biodiversity, genetics, biomechanics, chronic disease prevention, neuroscience, psychobiology, and psychology of drugs.

Having received a Bachelor of Science Degree, Andrés is now both a UMiami alumni and student as he tackles an Accelerated Master’s Degree through a fully funded research scholarship studying Applied Physiology with a concentration in Nutrition for Health and Human Performance. He also serves as a Graduate Assistant for the Department of Kinesiology and Sport Sciences.

Andrés has developed lifestyle medicine and longevity programs, co-authored books, and has led multiple online webinars in English and Spanish to discuss key topics such as Intermittent Fasting, Longevity, and Exercise Physiology to live audiences in the tens of thousands.

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Dr. Omalu was the first to identify, describe, and name Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy as a disease entity. Dr. Omalu has testified twice before the United States Congress and has provided hundreds of testimonies as an expert witness in federal courts across the country. Dr. Omalu is a member of the College of American Pathologists, American Society of Clinical Pathology, American College of Physician Executives, American College of Epidemiologists, American Association of Neuropathologists, American Academy of Forensic Sciences, National Association of Medical Examiners, International Academy of Pathology, and the American Medical Association.

Dr. Omalu has eight degrees in the medical sciences and business management, including his MB/BS/MD from the University of Nigeria, his MPH from the University of Pittsburgh, and his MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.

His work and life have been featured extensively, including a major Hollywood film by Sony Motion Pictures, “Concussion”, and several New York Times best-selling books including “The League of Denial” and “Concussion”.

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Charlie Morley is a bestselling author and teacher of lucid dreaming, shadow integration and Mindfulness of Dream & Sleep. He has been lucid dreaming for over 20 years and was “authorized to teach” within the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism by Lama Yeshe in 2008. Since then he has written four books which have been translated into 15 languages and has run workshops & retreats in more than 20 countries. He’s spoken at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the Ministry of Defence Mindfulness Symposium, The Houses of Parliament (on Buddhism & youth culture) and the Mindfulness Association Annual conferences. In 2018 he was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship grant to research PTSD treatment in Military Veterans and continues to teach people with trauma affected sleep a set of practices. His 2021 book Wake Up to Sleep is a practical guide to these practices. Charlie has been the lead consultant on scientific studies into lucid dreaming at both Swansea University and the Institute of Noetic Science. In 2019 he created the first Lucid Dreaming for Therapists course which trained a group of hypnotherapists, meditation teachers and therapists to use lucid dreaming with their clients. Charlie formally became a Buddhist at the age of 19. In his past life he trained and worked as an actor & scriptwriter before running a hip hop collective and touring Europe with them throughout his 20’s.

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Dr. Dominic D’Agostino is a tenured Professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine. He runs the website KetoNutrition and has been on over 200 podcasts talking about metabolic health. He is also a Research Scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. His laboratory develops and tests metabolic-based strategies for targeting CNS oxygen toxicity, epilepsy, neurodegenerative diseases, brain cancer, and metastatic cancer.

The main focus of his lab over the last 12 years has investigating the anticonvulsant and neuroprotective mechanism of the ketogenic diet and ketone metabolite supplementation. This approach can be used to treat a wide variety of pathologies linked pathophysiologically to metabolic dysregulation. Other areas of interest include researching metabolic-based drugs for cancer.

He was a research investigator and crew member on NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operation and has a personal interest in environmental medicine and methods to enhance safety and physiological resilience in extreme environments. His research is supported by the Office of Naval Research, Department of Defense, private organizations and foundations.

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Professor Larry Backer focuses his research on governance-related issues of globalization and the constitutional theories of public and private governance, with an emphasis on institutional frameworks for public-private law governance systems. He has an interest in the transformations of university governance and its relation to wider changes in societal ordering in the 21st century. He currently teaches courses on corporate social responsibility, corporations, multinational enterprises, and the constitutional law. He teaches courses on policy aspects of these areas at the Penn State School of International Affairs, along with the SIA core course, Actors, Institutions, and Legal Frameworks in International Affairs. He has lectured on issues of transnational, corporate and constitutional law in Asia, Latin America, Europe and Australia.

Professor Backer serves on the board of a number of journals and is a member of the American Law Institute and the European Corporate Governance Institute. He served as an elected member of the Penn State University Faculty Senate, and as chair of the Penn State University Faculty Senate.

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Thomas Seyfried is Professor of Biology at Boston College and received his Ph.D. in genetics and biochemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana. He completed his undergraduate work at the University of New England, where he recently received the distinguished Alumni Achievement Award. He also holds a master’s degree in genetics from Illinois State University. Seyfried served with distinction in the United States Army’s First Cavalry Division during the Vietnam War and received numerous medals.

Seyfried presently serves on several editorial boards, including those for Nutrition & Metabolism, Neurochemical Research, the Journal of Lipid Research, and ASN Neuro. He has over 180 peer-reviewed publications and is author of the best selling book Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer (Wiley Press).

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Brett Jones is a Certified Athletic Trainer and Strength and Conditioning Specialist based in Pittsburgh, PA. Mr. Jones holds a Bachelor of Science in Sports Medicine from High Point University, a Master of Science in Rehabilitative Sciences from Clarion University of Pennsylvania and is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA).

Brett is currently the Director of Education for StrongFirst and presenter and advisory board member for Functional Movement Systems. With over 25 years of experience, Brett has been sought out to consult with professional teams and athletes, as well as present throughout the United States and internationally.

As an Athletic Trainer who has transitioned into the fitness industry, Brett has taught kettlebell techniques and principles since 2003. He has taught for Functional Movement Systems (FMS) since 2006, and has created multiple DVDs and manuals with world-renowned physical therapist Gray Cook, including the widely-praised “Secrets of…” series.

Brett continues to evolve his approach to training and teaching, and is passionate about improving the quality of education for the fitness industry.

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Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen is tasked with helping us answer some of humanity’s biggest questions: Where did we come from? Are we alone? How does the universe work? Dr. Zurbuchen is well versed in the practice of asking difficult questions that help us seek interconnected answers leading to real world impacts. He is keenly interested in innovation and how leadership is developed and how the pursuit of excellence can help change the world. Dr. Zurbuchen was a professor of space science and aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He was the founding director of UM’s Center for Entrepreneurship at the College of Engineering and developed and ran several campus wide innovation initiatives, one of which led to the top-ranked undergraduate entrepreneurship program nationally.

During his career, Zurbuchen has authored or co-authored more than 200 articles in peer reviewed journals in solar and heliospheric phenomena. He earned his doctorate and Master of Science degrees in physics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. His honors include multiple NASA ground achievement awards, induction as a member of the International Academy of Astronautics and the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW), a NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, and the 2018 Heinrich-Greinacher prize, the leading science-related recognition from the University of Bern.

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